You’ve probably heard that best way to reach your customer is through empathy. Let’s face it, your customers don’t care about your product. What your customers do care about is knowing that someone understands their frustrations and can provide a solution for them.

We are all selfish beings—whether we care to admit it or not. We want to know, “What’s in it for me?”

Before I type one word in an email to my audience, I go through a question exercise to help me step into their thought process and get to the core of the message for the reader—not the company.

My questions include:

• What is the goal of this email? What is the one call-to-action?  Is it to convert to sales? Awareness?

• What is the purpose of the communication? For example, the goal may be to click to the product page to convert to a sale, but the goal is to communicate how this product will help the reader do XXX.

• Value proposition of the product?

• Where is the reader in the buyer journey?

• What is the reader’s current emotion? What do we want them to feel after reading our email? After using our product?

• What is their challenge?

• Why should they care about this message?

• What do they need or want? Join the conversation already happening in their head.

• What pain point does this product help to solve? What pain will the reader have if they do nothing?  What is the motivation to purchase X?

• What does success look like? Feel like? (The benefit of choosing this product). What are you empowering your audience to do?

• Empathy: Show your reader that you understand their problem better than anyone

• Concept: write one to three sentences that summarize your message.

Some of the questions are the same, worded slightly differently. I’m surprised when I discover different answers as I unravel this list of question—getting to the core of the message.

This exercise helps me to step into the mind of the reader. I do this for each audience segment because the motivations, buyer journey, product awareness and perceived benefits are different for each.

Remember, we can’t tell anyone what to do. Before we can ever get our customer to act, they have to understand and agree with the perceived benefit of your product. Start with empathy. Show your audience you clearly understand their challenge/problem/frustration. Show them that you are on their side. And by digging deep, going through these questions, you can uncover great insights that your customer will value.